sdX - more than 16 partitions?

[Hermann J. Beckers]

My hdisk1 has 17 partitions. So far no problem for SuSE 10.2 and Ubuntu 
6.06/6.10. But with the installation of 7.04 Ubuntu addresses it as sd* and 
that means a limit of 16 partitions. Searching the web shows it is a known 
problem. Suggested solution is to use LVM. But for me that means a lot of 
work destroying and recreating a lot of partitions. 

My question: Can I revert Ubuntu 7.04 to use the old ide/hda format?

Thanks 
hjb